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Magna Graecia: Titanomachia (A City State Quest)

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And it returns!

The first Magna Greacia was one of my first exposures to Quests, back before I even made an account on this site. I will definitely be following this with interest.

Not yet decided what to vote on.
 
[X] Demos Drakonia
[X] ...The City of Carthage
[X] Syrakousai

So this is my prefered choice, because it keeps us mostly "neutral".
The Demos Drakonia probably means cold but neutral relations with Taras due to diverging areas of interest. It has a good chance of keeping us out of the Peloponnesian War. Also with Corinth soon to be distracted we could make large gains in the Adriatic. Our only historical rival in that area would be Syracuse, which we would balance by allying Carthage. Of course this "neutrality" will leave us quite isolated on the Italian mainland.

The current winning combination (Antipater, Thurii, Syracuse) places us in a strong regional alliance. The population growth would also be really nice. What I worry about with that is having to fight a alliance combination of Syracuse/Krotone/Lokri/Taras.

Regardless of the outcome of this vote, I'm happy to see this quest returning.
 
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So, I have a question, is anyone else concerned by the fact the Hoplite's went from 70% or so of our military to less than half?

Greeks don't need Light infantry as much as they need Hoplite's for the Phalanx and push of shield on shield. I understand how it may have happened, not enough land for farmers maybe, but it's still very concerning to see our army so light on what is the core of any Greek army.

Unless we've majorly changed tactics we've got over 4000 Phalanx capable infantry when we combine literally the entire league and our Medium Infantry, who have shown to be poorer at the pushing matches in the past than is comfortable when put up against Greeks.

We have about 800 Cavalry with all our vassals and our elites added together though, which is kind of cool.
 
[X] Demos Antipatria
[X] ...Thurii & the Sikeliote League.
[X] Syrakousai.

Population is always good. And diplomacy too: we need tools to navigate the minefield of Peloponessian War.
 
Some ideas for reform that might or might not fit into ancient greece, putting down now while I still remember them.
Make team battle of perhaps a 100 against another 100 a sport of Eretria, using wooden spear and blunt wood sword to fight, it keep their skills sharp and train them more o work as a group while satisfying their cravings for competition.
Perhaps do something like that every month, and make a tournament with a prize at the end of the year?
Maybe even have commander contest, where they command multiple teams and fight each other for glory.
Play up the life of Arete aspect of the greek to the max.

maybe we could give a very stringent path to citizenship for Metis?
Something like, needing to be a metis in the city for two generation and covering yourself with enough glory. I know it's not really done in Greece.

I'll try to elaborate when I've had more sleep

[X] Demos Drakonia
[X] ...Thurii & the Sikeliote League.
[X] Syrakousai
 
McLuvin said:
So, I have a question, is anyone else concerned by the fact the Hoplite's went from 70% or so of our military to less than half?
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No? Our levy is still 40% hoplites, down from 55% at the end of the last thread, while being a higher absolute total and well supported by a trained navy, and a hugely enlarged complement of cavalry and light troops, to whom hoplites are really vulnerable.
 
Antiperia seem To be a very risky choice. I don't like the idea To have a too large part of the population with it's own culture becoming too powerful.

It makes me think how good le our cavalry and light infantry ?
 
To anyone out there, I remember that there was an EU4 build of our weird and loveable country.

Now that Imperator Rome is out and about, how about creating stats for Eretria?
 
Kalrotix said:
It makes me think how good le our cavalry and light infantry ?
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They were instrumental in our wars for hegemony. During the war against Syrakousai our cavalry served as the cavalry of our entire allied army.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that both our cavalry and light infantry ranked among the best in all of Magna Grecia.
 
That sounds cool. 6 pages for the first vote? Wow.

Anyway, votes from new guy completely unbiased by previous iterations:

[X] Demos Drakonia
That's a lot of trade.

[X] ...Thurii & the Sikeliote League.
Other allies sound really more trouble than gain. Athens will more than likely drag us into Peloponesian war and allying with Carthage seems to me like somehow betraying or Hellenic values.

[X] Taras
We should deal with troubles on our home turf first and these guys don't seem eager to ally with us.
 
[X] Demos Exoria
[X] ...Thurii & the Sikeliote League.
[X] Syrakousai

Changed my vote, too many metics are a bit too much of a risk.
 
Deadly Snark said:
They were instrumental in our wars for hegemony. During the war against Syrakousai our cavalry served as the cavalry of our entire allied army.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that both our cavalry and light infantry ranked among the best in all of Magna Grecia.
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Cool, I hope that one day they will be the best of Mediterranean. l love cavalry ^^
 
Demos Drakonia almost doubles our number of trade routes, but it also increases our tariff efficiency by around a third, so in effect it more than doubles our trade income. It's a pretty lucrative choice, my guesstimate would be that we're looking at around fifty extra round silvery bois Talents a turn. That's a little more (although they're in the same ballpark) than the roughly forty or so extra we will get in taxation from the Metics.

The other thing motivating me here though is that I think you need trade to breed trade, or at least, it helps.

Historically as the OP says, for various good reasons at the time we have not taken a hugely trade-oriented stance. If we have spent the last thirty five years slowly addressing that, and have a larger, stronger navy, then it seems to me it will be easier to find future opportunities for future growth. It is more easy to find future business opportunities when we have a larger number of merchants visiting the city and ours are more experienced and travel further afield, or rather ashore.

The extreme force multiplier that a strong navy can make in military affairs that @Ironanvil1 notes, as we have seen before in the Quest, should also not be overlooked.
Adhoc vote count started by Admiral Skippy on May 15, 2019 at 7:43 AM, finished with 139 posts and 46 votes.
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The Exoria seem frankly the weakest and most confining choice. Their trajectory is likely to take us inland, to ongoing wars and more resentful barbaroi to be held restless under our yoke. I dislike Eretria trying to be Sparta.
 
[X] Demos Exoria
[X] ...Thurii & the Sikeliote League.
[X] Taras.

The Demos
This was a tough one, I was really torn on whether to vote for the Demos Drakonia or Demos Exoria. Drakonia is obviously very appealing for the increased trade and income along with a greater influence in northern Italy and the Adriatic more widely, to say nothing of the benefits of cheaper to produce trireme's that require less manpower. Ultimately however I've had to go with Demos Exoria, for many reasons but primarily because we have too many enemies bordering us to deal with given we're heading into a period of sustained and prolonged conflict.

The Messapii have no love for us and the truce (which I assume still holds) exists only because Taras was a greater threat to the both of us and isn't something we can depend on holding. Then there's Taras itself, simple regional politics all but guarantees that our rivalry - even if we don't choose them as our 'hated enemy' - with them will continue until one of us is, at the very least, forced into a subservient position. Against the Lucani we have the Peuketii as a buffer but that means relatively little as we'll be forced to come to their aid if they're ever truly threatened or we risk losing them and with them a great deal of our local strength and influence. To also still have the Dauni to our north, confederated for over 30 years and no doubt increasingly integrated, is simply one threat to many for us to feasibly deal with at a time when the Peloponnesian War is about to begin and Syrakousai is once again seeking to restore it's Empire and unite Sicily under it.

If we haven't removed one of these enemies during the 34 year time skip it's going to be incredibly difficult to do once the quest begins. Any attempt to remove one will rightly invite a response from the others and none of them are weak enough to be easily removed if they're allowed to consolidate over three decades.

On top of that, we can't ignore how useful it will be to go into this period of war with improved levies and greatly strengthened permanent units.

As for the other options, Drakonia I could certainly live with although it would require us to show huge care to our immediate surroundings as the quest begins and I feel would require us to remove at least one of the enemies bordering us quite rapidly. And I'm not entirely convinced that would be an easy thing to do with so many other conflicts kicking off.

For Demos Antipatria while I can see the appeal of a larger population and the alliance with Metapontion (something I feel we should seek to achieve regardless of the start) the metics provide a considerable challenge to us even without this mass immigration. The system clearly needs reforms but if they're not implemented from a position of strength - prior to the mass immigration preferably - we risk civil anarchy. Massively inflating the metic population before these reforms are in place is something I can't see the logic of.

The Enemy
Regarding our enemy, I've gone for Taras. As I said earlier we're doomed to be rivals so we might as well go the whole way and make them our enemy and initial focus in the quest and look to truly and fully secure our regional hegemony. The destruction of the Dauni to our north and the alliance with Thurii to their southwest leaves us well placed to contain Taras and move against them when the opportunity arises.

Syrakousai... While we obviously need to contain them going forward, and the alliance with the Sikeliote League outs us in a good position to do that it just seems more important to secure our back yard before we act further afield.
 
Ironanvil1 said:
The Exoria seem frankly the weakest and most confining choice. Their trajectory is likely to take us inland, to ongoing wars and more resentful barbaroi to be held restless under our yoke. I dislike Eretria trying to be Sparta.
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It is kind of the Sparta cosplay option, yeah. Which has its pluses and minuses.

Honestly if we want to go that route, the Antipatrid option might be better, because at least that's sort of premised around waves of Greek colonists pushing into the interior, transforming barbarian lands into farms worked by former barbaroi serfs. We'd be heading towards being Greek Boers, but it's not an unworkable option, even if it's an odd one. With the Exoria option, that's a lot of resentful barbaroi, presided over by a thin upper layer of armed Greeks.

Now, that being said, none of the starting options constrain us for the rest of the game, or force us to continue their given strategy forever, although some make it easier to do so. We could in principle pick Exoria and then try and avoid interior entanglements, although that might be difficult. We could also in principle not pick Exoria, but then focus quite heavily on military improvements for a few administrations, or not pick Drakonia and focus on encouraging trade, or so on.

A large part of why I'm supporting trade and a navy, actually, is because I feel those may take quite a long while redevelop if we don't pick them now, as well as allowing for the greatest future growth. If we're unskilled in trade, it's actually quite difficult to find new opportunities without blundering around a lot.

(I too remember the days of "Goat City".)
 
[X] Demos Drakonia
[X] ...Thurii & the Sikeliote League.
[X] Syrakousai​
 
HastyGaming said:
If we haven't removed one of these enemies during the 34 year time skip it's going to be incredibly difficult to do once the quest begins. Any attempt to remove one will rightly invite a response from the others and none of them are weak enough to be easily removed if they're allowed to consolidate over three decades.
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The counterpoint is that Eretria has now been a fixture for more than two generations of Iapyges, with the Peuketti heavily integrated into our system, the Messapii beaten repeatedly and squeezed between us and Taras, with Egnatia demonstrating again the benefits of cooperation with Eretria, and the Dauni haven't successfully moved against us despite their 34 years of unity.
The Iapyges spent years and an ocean of blood trying to evict Eretria, and it didn't work.

Kerkyra, however, bent us over a barrel almost instantly, due to their fleet, because Eretria's entire territory is coastal and massively reliant on shipping to connect our cities and allow us to rapidly deploy our forces.

Militarily, while Exodia might get us some more experienced hoplites, it also gives us a restless conquered population to suck down our attention and lessen the forces we can effectively deploy elsewhere, whilst Drakonia provides trade wealth to hire mercenaries to buttress our troops if necessary, good fast ships to deploy them where needed, and, at the most basic level, a "spare" 20 men per trireme who could be placed in the land forces as necessary.
 
Admiral Skippy said:
Now, that being said, none of the starting options constrain us for the rest of the game, or force us to continue their given strategy forever, although some make it easier to do so.
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I would go even further than that and say that they don't constrain any of the game, even the start.

The mercantile focus of Demos Drakonia isn't something we particularly focused on during the initial 25 years of Eretria yet if it wins it will have been our primary focus for the following 34 years. Likewise, the massive migration brought about by Demos Antipatria isn't something that was ever much more than an afterthought at best, yet if it wins it will have been a massive focus for Eretria. These choices - none of them - bind us to a future course of action for any period of time, they simply represent the flaw that Eretria believed it had and chose to rectify over this three-decade period.

We can choose to continue with them, but we can similarly choose to say "job done" and pivot. For example, if we choose Demos Exoria that doesn't compel us to take further military action we could instead simply say 'we're now secure, it's time to focus on trade' and the reverse is true if we take Demos Drakonia. The only exception to this is Demos Antipatria which will require we immediately turn our focus to reform of the metic caste. The others do create issues that have to be solved, but none so urgently.
Ironanvil1 said:
The counterpoint is that Eretria has now been a fixture for more than two generations of Iapyges, with the Peuketti heavily integrated into our system, the Messapii beaten repeatedly and squeezed between us and Taras, with Egnatia demonstrating again the benefits of cooperation with Eretria, and the Dauni haven't successfully moved against us despite their 34 years of unity.
The Iapyges spent years and an ocean of blood trying to evict Eretria, and it didn't work.
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This is true but paints a partial picture at best. I would never argue that any single one of these enemies could utterly dislodge or destroy Eretria, but to dismiss them individually ignores the combined threat and they present and the, frankly awful, strategic situation it puts Eretria in.

The Peuketii are further integrated but, as I said, the threat of the Lucani remains and the integration of the Peuketii doesn't lessen the necessity of going to their aid if the situation is beyond their ability to manage. So to an extent, we have to treat their western border as our own. The Lucani are the threat, not the Peuketti. The Messapii may well find themselves trapped between us and Taras but that doesn't lessen their ability to exploit an opening if we turn to deal with the Dauni, or an enemy further afield, and find ourselves with too few men to secure every border. That would be the sensible thing for them to do after all.

And as for the Dauni themselves, I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't undertaken a massive campaign against us (although if we don't remove them with this vote I wouldn't be surprised if a small war or two was added to the 34 year period), after all they had only just been forced into a confederation by sheer force of will of a single dedicated man. The sensible thing for him to do is to consolidate his position, utterly break his internal rivals and ensure the confederation will last beyond his death. The sensible thing for us to do is destroy them before this can happen and they change from being a newly formed, easily scattered confederation into a singular powerful enemy.
Ironanvil1 said:
Kerkyra, however, bent us over a barrel almost instantly, due to their fleet, because Eretria's entire territory is coastal and massively reliant on shipping to connect our cities and allow us to rapidly deploy our forces.
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They got their way, no doubt about that. But the cause of that was simply that they were so much more powerful than us, in every way. Us starting with a fleet of 22 triremes instead of 18 doesn't to me seem like it will make a massive difference given they had a fleet of (at least) 60 34 years ago. This isn't me saying that we can ignore our fleet and the Adriatic I just don't believe Demos Drakonia - for all its benefits - provides a naval improvement significant enough that Kerkyra (or anyone of that scale) couldn't still do exactly the same thing to us. Honestly, even the Eretria of now wouldn't have the fleet to challenge Kerkyra of then.
Ironanvil1 said:
Militarily, while Exodia might get us some more experienced hoplites, it also gives us a restless conquered population to suck down our attention and lessen the forces we can effectively deploy elsewhere, whilst Drakonia provides trade wealth to hire mercenaries to buttress our troops if necessary, good fast ships to deploy them where needed, and, at the most basic level, a "spare" 20 men per trireme who could be placed in the land forces as necessary.
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A restless, yet fractured and broken, Dauni who have been forced into paying us tribute and providing men is infinitely preferable to a unified, consolidated enemy.
 
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